


Six Lefts

by calvinahobbes



Series: Asexual!Neal [2]
Category: White Collar
Genre: Asexuality, Established Relationship, Multi, Polyamory, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-22
Updated: 2010-08-22
Packaged: 2017-10-11 04:56:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/108657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calvinahobbes/pseuds/calvinahobbes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four wrongs don't make two rights but six lefts do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Six Lefts

**Author's Note:**

> A sort-of companion piece to [A Tenderness, Beyond](http://calvinahobbes.dreamwidth.org/16753.html). Asexual!Neal POV. Beta'd by Nora Charles, most excellent cheerleader and sounding board XD

Neal was a cute child. Chubby cheeks, dark angelic curls, and big blue eyes. Everything came easy for him: old ladies vied for his attention with cookies; there wasn't a scrap he couldn't get out of by batting his eyelashes. He was the funny one and everyone wanted to play with him.

Then the growth spurt started. Neal was a painfully awkward teenager. His head and hands and feet outgrew the rest of him, he couldn't put on weight, and all the while it seemed like his legs were growing by the inches every night. Suddenly all his old tricks failed him. Nobody thought he was cute anymore. And to add insult to injury, all the games changed, and Neal just couldn't understand the rules.

There was Spin the Bottle. Truth or Dare. 5 Minutes in Heaven. He hated all of them. He couldn't understand what all the fuss was about, all this hype about girls and breasts and kissing. At first he played along, but eventually they all sensed it: he didn't really want to join them. The last two years in high school Neal didn't really talk to anyone. He stayed home and read spy novels and studied his coin collection.

///

College was like a revelation to him. He'd been so busy scheming to become a master thief (or a grand art forger, he hadn't quite decided yet, but thought maybe he could just do both) that he hadn't really been paying attention to other people. Now it turned out that he had come back into his looks. Girls, boys, professors: they all stared or blushed or smiled. Once again he could get away with anything. Immediately he was invited along to all the cool parties. At first he mostly declined, thinking it would be high school all over again, but then he began to discover something: It was all about appearances. As long as he _pretended_ he was interested, nobody seemed to notice that he never went home with anyone. If he kept his conversation about girls sufficiently vague, no one discovered that he didn't actually know anything.

Of course it couldn't last. Her name was Lisa, and she was beautiful. They made an amazing couple. Neal liked her, he liked talking to her, he liked hanging out with her, they had fun. One night she got drunk, climbed on top of him and started licking his mouth. Neal was shocked and horrified and tried to make her stop, tried to convince her she'd regret it in the morning. "It's not like it's my first time!" she said with a big roll of her eyes. When he batted her hands away again, she leaned back and looked at him, squinting. "You're not a fag, are you?"

Neal thought about it. He thought about being here with some guy, who would have Lisa's features -- the dark hair, the great cheekbones, the crooked mouth, and deep brown eyes. He thought about touching that guy, kissing him... He shook his head emphatically.

Lisa, who had been looking at him suspiciously, ground herself against his crotch. "Come on, I know you want to." Neal considered the evidence and decided that apparently he did want to.

The whole thing was horrible. He didn't remember any of the details; he only had vague recollections of heat and sweat and wetness, the sounds of Lisa's moans directly in his ear, the pungent scent of sex mixing with the smell of her shampoo.

He never spoke to Lisa again. Every time he saw her or thought about her his palms started sweating and his stomach roiled. It wasn't a sick feeling, just a feeling like he wanted to run far away and hide and never come out. One dark evening, when he was slightly tipsy, he dared broach the topic with one of the guys he hung out with. Carl had scoffed and slapped him on the back, "She was a sloppy drunk. And it was your first time. The first time sucks. You gotta get out there; shop around some!"

///

Neal did not get out there. He studied art history and economics and joined the drama club. He liked the drama kids; they were all eccentric and fun and very relaxed to be around. Marc in particular was fun to be around. Neal had always loved dressing up; in his dad's suits and his mom's dresses. He'd put on shows in the living room. In high school he hadn't done it much; nobody seemed to think it was cute anymore. But in the drama club's dressing room with Marc it was okay again. They put on long floral dresses and huge hats and did a sketch for the others.

One night, going through lines in his room, Marc kissed him. It was just a short peck on the lips, and something had fluttered in Neal's stomach, but he didn't feel like running away. Marc looked a bit like _he_ wanted to run, though, so Neal smiled at him and took his hand, and they went back to running lines. After that they kissed sometimes, when they were alone. Neal enjoyed it; he liked feeling close to Marc, he liked the way it felt to lie close together on the bed and talk quietly.

"Have you ever been with a guy?" Marc asked one night, tracing the pattern on Neal's t-shirt. Neal shook his head. Marc peeked at him through his lashes. "Girl?" Neal nodded. Marc paused. Neal waited to see where it was going. "How was it?" he asked. Neal puffed out a breath: "It was pretty horrible!" Marc giggled and hid his face against Neal's shoulder.

Neal was happy. He felt that things were going really well. His brushwork was getting better, his grades were great, Marc was awesome. Apparently Marc did not quite feel the same way. It was a different night, on the same bed, and Marc's hands were getting much more adventurous than usual. Neal was beginning to feel he was out of his depth. "You're so hot," Marc whispered against his throat. "I could suck you off." Neal was reminded of Lisa; of the heat and the heavy breathing, and he tried to get some air between them. Marc loomed up over him. "I know you were with that girl and it was awful, but this is going to be different, Neal! You know it is." Neal knew no such thing. It all felt eerily familiar and he said so. "You can't let one bad experience ruin everything. Come on, I really want to." And apparently Neal was a sucker for big brown eyes.

It was different. Less frenzied, first of all, but also much more nerve racking. Neal felt on display, like his every move and response (or lack thereof) was being closely monitored. Marc's mouth was hot and wet, and when he really started sucking it even felt kind of good, but the dissonance of his labored breathing and tiny moans threw Neal off. He felt detached from his own body, as if his brain was floating somewhere above it all. Eventually Marc let him go with a wet pop. "I'm sorry, my jaw is too sore..." He looked so dejected that Neal just wanted to hug him, so he did. As he did so, he felt Marc's arm wrestle against his, heard the clink of his belt. Neal kept holding on, fixing his eyes on a spot on the wall, and waited. Marc came quickly, breathing a huge sigh of relief. Neal felt a warmth stain his jeans-clad thigh and couldn't help but think about doing the laundry. Marc pulled back, smiling. "Should I?" He made a motion towards Neal's dick. Neal shook his head and quickly took hold of himself. He knew this part, and it was over quickly. Neal didn't really know what he expected, but certainly not for Marc to cuddle up close and start talking about his family back home. Neal loved it. He felt that maybe sex could be worth it, if this was the reward, getting to be close to someone and hearing them tell things they hadn't told anyone else...

Things with Marc didn't last long after that. They fought over weird things, and Neal had no idea what was going on. Marc was sweet and cuddly one day and angry or moping the next. Neal said some mean things. Marc retaliated. It was the worst thing Neal had ever felt. One day, as Marc was gearing up to rant at him again, Neal demanded an explanation, no bullshit. "No bullshit?!" Marc nearly screamed. "No bullshit? You're the bullshitter, Neal! You don't really want to be with me! You don't want me! Every time I try to be close to you, you say, 'not tonight, honey', like we're some stupid old married couple. I want you to fuck me, Neal! But you don't want anything."

"That's not true." Neal felt like the ceiling was caving in on him. His eyes stung. "I want you, I want to be with you. I want to know everything about you and I want to have fun with you. We have so much fun together."

Marc sighed. "You don't want to be my boyfriend. You just want to be my friend. I want someone who wants me, physically. It can't work."

He left. Neal reeled. He thought about it for days, about what Marc had said, and he couldn't make it fit. He wanted to tell Marc that love didn't equal sex, that being with someone was about more than just that. Marc stood patiently in his doorway and listened until Neal had run out of words. He looked at Neal with big sad eyes and said, "You're right. It is about more than just sex, but sex is important too. I know what I want, and it doesn't seem like you want the same. At least not with me."

Neal thought maybe he understood about heartbreak after that. It was tough at first, but he wanted to stay friends with Marc no matter the cost. Marc seemed dubious at first, like he wasn't sure whether it was against the rules. Neal was beginning to hate the rules. Marc got a new boyfriend who was very suspicious about Neal hanging around. It took him a very long time to believe that it 'wasn't like that' between Marc and Neal, but eventually he seemed to accept it.

///

After almost two years in college Neal dropped out and moved to New York. He started selling forgeries of lesser-known works, steadily working himself up. He made some interesting acquaintances (he learned quickly -- well, after he'd been conned once or twice -- that thieves didn't have friends).

Neal didn't spend a lot of time thinking about sex once he left college. He spent a lot of time thinking about jewelry and the composition of paper money, and he read a lot of really interesting books, and went to the opera and had a great time. It wasn't that he'd formulated some sort of philosophy of what or who he was, it was more like he'd set it aside, like an interesting but useless trinket. But something happened with Rani that forced him to think about some of the assumptions he'd had about himself.

Rani was a pickpocket and a con-woman who frequented the posh parties around town and liberated rich people of their jewelry as well as their checks. She had an amazing presence, and Neal tried to emulate everything she did. She laughed at him a lot, but dressed him up in fancy clothes and let him tag along. He was her lap dog; he would do anything to impress her, just to get a pat on the head (real or metaphorical).

"A good con is just like picking someone's pocket," she said. "It's all about distraction. Suggestion. You have to seem genuine, make them think about something else. Appear in control. You have to know exactly what you're doing."

Rani knew what she was doing, and she knew exactly how to make other people jump for her. She had a way of issuing out orders that made an electric current run down Neal's spine. She could tell him to jump off a building, or hand over a heist, or kiss her and he'd do it before he had a chance to stop himself. She laughed like she had his number. Neal didn't care; he just wanted her to keep doing what she was doing to him. He felt like his brain was cooking, his palms were sweating in a completely different way from anything he'd felt before.

It didn't happen often, but it happened a handful of times. They would be giddy after a particularly successful party or they would be bored together during dry spells. "I don't know what your game is, Caffrey," she had said the first time. "Whether you like girls or boys or sheep, and I don't care. But people respond to confidence. Women like men who are in control -- hell, everyone likes to let go. Don't they, Caffrey? You can't be afraid to touch if you have to."

Neal learned to touch. He learned to telegraph intent through looks and gestures and words that said one thing and meant another. He learned to kiss, learned to control it, and learned what each different kiss could mean. He learned to press up against someone and make it seem like he wanted to be there, learned to look at someone as if he wanted to eat them for breakfast. He learned how to run his hands over someone else and make it seem like he wanted sex while secretly checking their jewelry. Rani would laugh and laugh and take him out on the town to try out each new trick.

The most important life lesson he ever had from Rani was simple: Sex, or the promise of sex, makes people stupid and careless. Flirting became one of Neal's greatest weapons.

And then they pulled a brilliant scam for lots of money, and his first thought when she tied him to a chair was, "Fuck, yes!" Then she kissed him and left with the heist. His second thought was, "This could be a problem."

///

After that Neal began to trust people quite a bit less. He kept his relationships casual, he upped the ante on flirting, and he generally felt that he was breezing through life. Actually, he was having a grand time of it: doing amazing, thrilling work and running from the law.

Kate was the first person to tell him he was a romantic. At that point in life Neal didn't exactly feel like Romeo. He didn't exactly know who he felt like; he didn't really know any famous people or great literary characters that didn't like sex but enjoyed being tied up and bossed around. He didn't tell her that of course. He just smiled one of his most charming smiles and conned her blind. It wasn't supposed to be the start of something, but she didn't drop him like he expected; she kept coming back, kept offering him new, interesting jobs. She inched her way under his skin, job by job, conversation by conversation, until he could only admit that she'd had him pegged from the start.

They dreamed big. Kate wasn't the kind to settle. She dreamt big, and she made Neal dream bigger. At first their connection was founded on a common dream of a real bottle of expensive wine and the kind of life style that would go with it. But for Neal the dream changed: the bottle was a prop, and Kate was the real dream -- coming home to her, building a home together. Neal wanted it with every fiber of his being, so badly that his work became careless. He was so fixated on the goal that he forgot to check for obstacles.

When Kate kissed him and asked him to come into her bed, he kissed her back and imagined he could see their future stretch out in front of them, smooth like a perfectly paved road. He employed every trick in Rani's playbook without a second of hesitation. He was convinced that he could show her everything this way. Touch was the language of lovers, and he would master it perfectly. He would prove to her how much he loved her.

With Kate he learned exactly what lengths he would go to for someone he loved. Breaking out of prison was the least he would do.

///

Or maybe the truth was that Neal just wasn't cut out for prison. It was boring. Teaming up with Peter was a double win -- he got a chance to find Kate, and he got to do something fun meanwhile. At first it really was just about having something to do, to prevent his brain from rotting. He thought that solving crime would entertain him. It looked like the next best thing, since _doing_ crime was, at least for the time being, not an option. At that point he didn't realize the irony: not even prison had apparently clued him into the fact that he wasn't as much in control as he thought he was.

It took him a long time to admit that it wasn't the crime or the undercover work or even chasing Kate that made his pulse jump. It was seeing how far he could push Peter before he got a reaction. He really did think he was doing his best to manipulate Peter, that all their talk about trust was about him getting as much wiggle-room to search for Kate as possible.

At some point it became tradition: Neal would cut his ankle monitor and do something brave (stupid, Peter would say) and the feds would show up and hold him at gun point until Peter strode in and clapped his cuffs on him. And Neal would try to ignore the electric current running down his spine.

Then one day, after just such a crazy stunt -- one that had been maybe a little crazier than usual -- Peter slapped on the cuffs with a little more force than usual. Without a word they drove back to his place. Peter had pushed him onto the couch and gone upstairs, still not speaking a word. As Neal sat there, handcuffed in Peter and Elizabeth's living room with Satchmo padding up to sniff him hello, he realized he didn't want to be anywhere else. His head was buzzing with an empty feeling and he felt like he could sleep for years. He heard the water running upstairs and then Peter's steps on the stairs. Neal stared apprehensively up at him as he loomed above, a stormy expression on his face. He took Neal's hands and removed the cuffs. When he finally spoke it was like an explosion. "I can't believe you, Neal! That was stupid and dangerous and _completely_ unnecessary! Why can't you just--"

Neal just kept staring, waiting for whatever came next, but Peter appeared to be beyond speech. Neal's head was spinning, his heart was pounding. And then he threw caution to the wind. "What? Why can't I just what? Just tell me and I'll do it. I'll do anything." Peter stared at him. Next thing he knew Peter was kneeling on the floor, a hand around the back of Neal's neck, pushing their foreheads together almost painfully. They stayed like that for a long time.

After that Neal got a little crazy. He thought that maybe Peter was a little crazy, too. They stared at each other all the time, sometimes at the worst possible moments. Peter would ask for coffee and Neal would nearly spill the whole thing trying to bring him a cup. Peter would tell him to shut up, and Neal wouldn't speak another word. He was dizzy with it, with the knowledge that it was no longer in his head, that Peter was checking him just for the hell of it, for the joy of it.

///

What surprised Neal about Peter wasn't that he genuinely liked him -- Peter was such a big fake grump with a heart of gold and Neal was despairingly fond of him, right from the start. What surprised him wasn't how much he liked Peter's beautiful brown eyes, or how much he enjoyed it when Peter told him what to do. Neal knew that falling for Peter had been inevitable.

What surprised Neal about Peter was Elizabeth. Neal had tried a lot of things in life, he'd felt many things, but he never imagined he'd fall in love with two people at the same time -- and he certainly didn't expect to be in love with them as a couple. He didn't want to steal either one away: he just wanted to fit into their life as it was. He only wished they had room for him.

Elizabeth was amazing. Neal felt high sometimes after talking to her; they had the best rapport he thought he'd ever felt with anyone. She was sharp, and she cared about many of the things he cared about. The more he talked to her, the more he thought he knew exactly what she'd say before she even opened her mouth, and the more he loved it: he loved it when he was right, and he loved it when she surprised him. She could be so insightful at times, and other times she could be as silly as a schoolgirl. Sometimes they spent hours together giggling on the couch.

He talked to Elizabeth about Kate. She listened, and she seemed to understand what he felt like. It had taken him a while to accept that she was gone, and sometimes it was hard not to feel that he had abandoned her when he did that. Elizabeth knew when to say something, always the right thing, and when to just listen and sympathize. It was one thing he couldn't really talk to Peter about, because his version of comfort was to try to convince Neal that Kate had been bad for him anyway. Peter meant well, but he didn't quite understand about Kate.

One night, not particularly long after his confession to Peter, he and Elizabeth were spending just such an evening together on the couch, while Peter was working late. Before Neal knew what he was doing he was telling her about Kate, about Marc, even a little bit about Rani. She made it fun to talk about it, and suddenly they were talking about crushes, falling in love. Elizabeth talked about other boyfriends before Peter, but mostly she talked about him, about how he made her laugh, what drove her crazy. Neal laughed, "He can be such a grump." Elizabeth nodded, "Right, and he just won't let it go! And then when he does--"

"He tries to pretend he was never serious about it anyway." They laughed, but the mood had changed. Elizabeth reached out and tentatively brushed a hand over his forehead, combed her fingers through his hair. Neal sighed, couldn't look at her. "I'm in love with him, El..." It hung there, for a long stretched-out moment, while Neal felt his heart beat. The hand left his hair, and he tried to brace himself.

"No kidding!" she shoved his shoulder lightly, her voice sounding playful. "Hey, me too!" He looked up in surprise. "Maybe we should make a club..." The playfulness was seeping out of her voice, and the look in her eye told him she felt the ground shaking under them, too.

He stared at her, heart pounding now. "I don't know. Do you think maybe Peter would want to join an 'I love El' Club with me as well?" Her smile was enormous. Then she kissed him, a big wet smack on the lips that made him laugh.

"I don't know, but you can ask him," she said and hugged him closer.

"Ask me what?" Peter was staring at them from the door, seemingly arrested in the middle of closing it. His gaze was hooked on the two of them, and he was holding entirely still like he was afraid that a sudden movement might scare them apart. "My permission to run away together?" his tone was deceptively light.

"No, no." Neal got up from the couch and walked towards him, trying to keep the joke going. "See, we wanna run away _with_ you!"

"We started a club," Elizabeth said over his shoulder.

Peter grinned.

Neal crossed to him, put a hand on his chest. They studied each other like that for several moments. Then Neal kissed him, short and sweet, and made for the door.

"Wait, where are you going?" Peter sounded someplace between confused and annoyed.

Neal turned, smiled at them. "Home. I'll see you tomorrow at work. El, later?"

"Yeah. Come for dinner." She seemed less surprised, but still a little nervous, a little disappointed.

Shutting the door was surprisingly easy for Neal. Peter and Elizabeth were married and they deserved a chance to talk about it without him there, making hopeful puppy dog eyes at them. He was nervous, he was happy and in love and full of hope, but he wasn't afraid. They wanted the same thing he did, he felt so sure of it.

///

After that they were perhaps all three of them a little crazy. A lot ridiculous. They were almost never apart, two of them at least were together almost all the time. Neal was riding a high like nothing he had ever experienced before: it was like each crush fed into the other; when he was alone with Peter they invariably ended up talking about Elizabeth, and when he was with Elizabeth they talked about Peter. It was like always having both of them around, even if one was physically away.

Neal kept expecting things to get awkward. He kept preparing speeches for them, trying to explain that he didn't want to have sex with them without sounding like a snob or an idiot. But nothing ever happened to prompt the conversation: they kissed, they hugged. Neal liked touch, he liked physical shows of affection, he just had his limits. And whenever they would come up against those limits, he could simply back away and no one would make a big deal out of it.

He went back to his own place to sleep. He wanted to be around them all the time, but he wasn't brave enough to ask to stay, because that would for sure lead to the conversation he didn't want to have. He wanted things to be different, to finally get it right. He was older and wiser, but a part of him was still uncertain, like he wasn't sure if he dared to be honest with them. He thought about Kate and all the parts of himself he had been willing to sacrifice just to be with her, and he thought about how much he would do to be able to stay with Peter and Elizabeth.

For a few weeks, some months after they started, Peter did seem to be more easily annoyed with him, pushier in his shows of affection. In turn, Neal pulled further away, focused more of his energy on Elizabeth. He knew it was happening, but he couldn't seem to turn either Peter or himself in their tracks.

And then one night, just as Neal had written Peter off as a lost (grumpy) cause for the night and was about to head home, Peter invited him to stay the night. "Just sleep," he clarified. Neal never expected Peter to be the first to address the situation outright, and once again he felt himself smiling ridiculously, unable to stop himself.

After that it was weirdly formal; walking Satchmo together, putting the dishes away, turning out the lights downstairs. Elizabeth found him a toothbrush in the cabinet under the sink, and he unwrapped it with a dull excitement roiling in his stomach, listening to the small sounds of the two of them next door in the bedroom. He stared at himself in the mirror and tried to decide whether he was lucky or in too deep.

He brushed past Elizabeth in the door, and she smiled at him, open and relaxed as if she wasn't nervous or surprised that he was right there. Peter was standing by the foot of the bed, just wearing boxers and a t-shirt. It made him look softer, more human, and Neal felt even more awed that he was allowed to be there, to see it.

"I, uh, got you a t-shirt. And you get to pick where you want to sleep. I think you'll feel better in control of that," Peter said and shook his head with an amused expression when Neal tried to contradict him. "Don't even start. You need to be in control of how you're not in control." That threw Neal off. Peter grinned. "Don't look at me like that, I'm an FBI agent. I know my man." He took a step closer, threw an arm around Neal's neck and hauled him in. Telegraphing. He was telegraphing his move. Neal hugged him back and tried to pretend he wasn't reeling.

Once Neal began to share a bed with them it was as if the last dam broke. He talked about everything; about every sexual experience he'd ever had, about what had meant something to him and what hadn't. Peter and Elizabeth spent a lot of time looking either stunned or very thoughtful, and Neal just kept talking. "I think one of the things that I like about our situation is that you have each other," he explained one night, curled up close between them in bed. "That way you don't need _me_ so much for the sex part."

Elizabeth laughed. Peter said, "Well, I guess that's one way to put it," sounding a little dismayed. "But it's your decision. We want to share everything with you. You're the one who decides how far it goes." Neal nodded and snuggled closer.

///

"Don't you have any photos?" Elizabeth asked one day, out of the blue. Neal looked at her fondly. He thought he knew what was coming. "I mean, you must have some personal effects hidden away somewhere, right?" She was resting her arm on the back of the couch, her right leg folded up and pressing against Neal's thigh. Peter sat down on his other side with an explosive sigh and put an arm around his shoulders. Neal grinned at her. "It's just that we want to know you! You've already seen my prom photos, and don't pretend you don't love the wedding album." Neal did love the wedding album; they looked so young and ridiculously happy. And Peter's hair was a sight to be seen. She rested her head on his shoulder. "We could make an album together... I bet you were a cute child," she said, tiny wistful sigh. Neal scooted down in the couch, reached blindly for Peter's hand and hid his grin in Elizabeth's hair.

/end/


End file.
